Movies From the Black Lagoon
The Last Lovecraft - 2009, Unrated
By Tom Doty

A pair of misfits team up with a basement dwelling nerd to oppose an invasion by centuries old monsters in this quirky take on the mythos created by H.P. Lovecraft.
H.P. Lovecraft was one weird mama-jama who created his own mythology to go along with his short stories that were published in pulp magazines in the 20s and 30s. His tales were all weaved into an ancient race of aliens that colonized earth but were trapped in another dimension just aching to get back on our plane of existence and consuming humans like so many tic-tacs.
This film pays homage to Lovecraft by theorizing that all of these tales were true. Furthermore there are secret societies that wish to bring back the evil ones which are opposed by a sect of Lovecraft worshipping scholars that stand ready to defend us.
The film opens with the greatest of these alien creatures (Cthulu itself) ready to make a comeback after a piece of the key to its' crypt is discovered. Sects of Lovecraft-ians have been waiting for this to happen, however, and have a cunning plan. They will take the other half of the key (which they have been guarding) and entrust it to the last descendant of Lovecraft himself. Meanwhile Cthulu's strong arm (a nasty red faced creature) has assembled a squad of fish people and humans (who double as acolytes and food for the fish people) to take out the Lovecraft heads and steal their key half (despite the fact that all of this stuff is supposedly secret everyone seems to know the whereabouts of everyone else).
This brings us to Jeff. He's a 9-5 doofus slaving away at a gift basket company with a squirrel motif. He woks alongside his slacker roommate, Charlie. They are pretty underwhelming as a duo though they have managed to complete two pages of a comic book project over a period of six months. A representative from the Lovecraft lovers gets them the key half and doesn't even have to explain the back story as Charlie read a comic book of it which is then used to give the audience an animated short course on the history of the Cthulu mythology.
Now we're off to the races, as our pair of wing nuts must save the world by teaming up with an uber-nerd that they used to beat up in high school. After spiriting the nerd form his grandmother's basement they hit the road in search of a sea captain who survived an encounter with the fish people. Nothing goes right and everyone is going to have to get dirty if they're to stop Armageddon. God help us all.
Fun stuff here and a real treat for Lovecraft fans as these guys actually read the books. Sadly the budgetary constraints keep this film from reaching its true potential as the ultimate Lovecraft yarn (that credit still goes to Stuart Gordon's 'Re-Animator). That said there many "yucks" here and they are faithful to the spirit of Lovecraft. The screenplay could have used a polish as they miss some opportunities. Mainly they could have had more fun if they had pursued the fact that these guys are clueless about women. There is only one woman in the film and she's gone way too soon to make an impact. This flick does rock a cool monster or two and one very funny joke that demonstrates why the fish people will never take over the earth by mating with humans. Lovecraft fans will have a good time with this and it is short enough (at 78 minutes) to appeal to genre fans of other stripes.
Bets Lines: "My money is on you being brutally killed in two days."
"I never baby sat a mer-guy before."
"What if dolphins were robots?"
"There's no such thing as fish people, dude."

Tom Doty occasionally emerges from the Lagoon to check his e-mail and to read to children every Wednesday at 10:30am at Borders in Hagerstown. If you'd like to get a message to him, write to: dotyfox@myactv.net.